Teachable Moments: Health care 'reform' started at desert hospital

12:48 PM,
Apr. 17, 2013

Sidney Garfield in the desert, 1933.

Written by

On April 17, 1906, Sidney Garfield was born in Elizabeth, N.J. He developed the first "health maintenance organization" at his small California desert hospital in 1933 and was the co-founder of the Kaiser Permanente health care system in 1945.

Garfield was a relatively new physician, graduating from the University of Iowa Medical School in 1928, when he saw an opportunity to open a new hospital in 1933 east of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert. The country was mired in the Depression, and Garfield figured the 5,000 workers building the aqueduct from the Colorado River to Los Angeles would need ...